Published 10:13 pm, Thursday, March 6, 2014

Fueling suspicions in Stamford that Bridgewater Associates is no longer interested in relocating its headquarters from Westport to the city's South End, the Westport News has reported an attorney for the hedge fund as saying that he believes the odds are against a move.

Larry Weisman, a land use attorney for Bridgewater, was quoted as saying at a Westport planning and zoning hearing last week that, based on his meeting with a Bridgewater design team, there is "only a 20 percent probability of a move to Stamford."

The story goes on to report Weisman as saying that the assessment was his own, not something he heard from Bridgewater officials.

Weisman, who works with the firm Halloran & Sage, is representing Bridgewater on a proposed zoning amendment that would allow the company to expand its current office in Westport. Bridgewater currently occupies a three-story 47,000-square-foot building at 1 Glendinning Place.

According to the 2013 grand list, the company had the third-highest taxable property in the town, with an assessed value of $25.5 million.

Reached by telephone on Thursday, Weisman declined to comment on the story, instead referring all questions to Bridgewater.

In 2012, the hedge fund, which manages roughly $120 billion in assets, announced an economic incentive agreement with the state to build a $750 million headquarters on Stamford's waterfront. As part of that deal, Bridgewater also agreed to add between 750 and 1,000 employees to its current staff of 1,225. In return, the state has offered to provide the company with as much as $115 million.

Ryan Fitzgibbon, a Bridgewater spokeswoman at the public relations firm Prosek Partners, reissued a statement the company made last month in which Bridgewater expressed its excitement for "the prospect of a state of the art campus that will bring all of our employees together under one roof."

But the company also noted "a number of hurdles that we would need to overcome before we could bring this project to fruition."

"The outstanding issues which we continue to evaluate include zoning and community related issues as well as the overall feasibility, cost, and complexity of the project," the statement read.

Bridgewater's proposed expansion in Stamford had been hyped by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and state officials as a win-win deal for the city and state. Malloy, a former mayor of Stamford, said he himself initiated discussions with Bridgewater's founder Ray Dalio during an encounter at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2012.

"This is a homerun for us," he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television shortly after he announced the state's deal with the hedge fund in August 2012.

But from the start, the project ran up against protests stemming from the dismantling of a boatyard on the proposed 14-acre development site. Building and Land Technology, which owns the property, is facing a cease-and-desist from the city for removing a protected water-dependent use without zoning approval.

Building and Land Technology did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the last year, the state has tried to deflect doubts about the project.

Reached for comment on Thursday, Ron Angelo, a deputy commissioner with the state Department of Economic and Community Development, reaffirmed the state's perspective.

"We continue to work with the company and continue to have a very strong dialogue with the company and hope that the local issues can be resolved that will enable this project to move forward," he said.